What was the best year for board games?

The highest rated years on BoardGameGeek

 Posted on August 22, 2024  |  9 minutes  |  1833 words  |  Markus Shepherd

Corey Thompson (of Above Board TV and Dice Tower Dish fame) recently raised an interesting question on the Board Games Insider podcast: In what year do you think the best titles (highest rated titles) were released? He actually answered the question twice, first in episode #328 based on an analysis he ran a couple of years ago and then again in #330 with more up-to-date data. I’m not going to spoil his answer here – the podcast in general is worth a listen – so go and find those episodes on your favourite podcast platform. [Read More]
BoardGameGeek  Ratings  Highest rated games  Corey Thompson  Board Games Insider  Golden age  Cult of the new 

The world of board games

Board game rankings by country

 Posted on April 25, 2024  |  7 minutes  |  1324 words  |  Markus Shepherd

BoardGameGeek (BGG) users can select their country of residence in their profile. The main purpose is to find other users in your region to play face to face or maybe trade games, but but over here at Recommend.Games we obviously cannot help ourselves but to use this information for some interesting statistics. 🤓 Let’s start with the usual disclaimer: We will have to rely on whatever information BGG provides. In particular, users can freely choose their country. [Read More]
BoardGameGeek  BGG  ranking  rating  Bayesian  dummy ratings  highest rated games  alternative rankings 

Recommend.Games ranking explained

 Posted on February 22, 2022  |  6 minutes  |  1123 words  |  Markus Shepherd

We have some pretty exciting news! 🤩 Since 2022-02-22, we’ve been using a new and improved ranking as the default sorting for our front page at Recommend.Games. … What do you mean, you haven’t noticed there’s a R.G ranking? You know, that thing that’s referenced in the statistics? … You haven’t ever opened that view?!? 😱 OK, let’s back up for a second. R.G’s primary purpose is a recommendation engine, that is, finding personalised game recommendations based on a user’s preferences (in this case as expressed through their BoardGameGeek ratings). [Read More]
news  ranking  highest rated games  alternative rankings 

Reverse engineering the BoardGameGeek ranking – Part 2!

 Posted on January 26, 2021  |  3 minutes  |  533 words  |  Markus Shepherd

This is the second part of a series explaining and analysing the BoardGameGeek rankings. Read the first part here. Last time I left you with the nice result that BoardGameGeek (BGG) calculates its ranking by taking users’ ratings for a particular game and then add around 1500-1600 dummy ratings of 5.5. This so-called geek score is used to sort the games from best (Gloomhaven) to worst (Tic-Tac-Toe). One detail however we touched on in passing, but did not resolve, is how that number of dummy ratings develop over time. [Read More]
BoardGameGeek  BGG  ranking  rating  statistics  Bayesian  geek score  top 100  dummy ratings  highest rated games  circle of hype 

Reverse engineering the BoardGameGeek ranking

 Posted on October 3, 2020  |  13 minutes  |  2607 words  |  Markus Shepherd

TL;DR: BoardGameGeek calculates its ranking by adding around 1500-1600 dummy ratings of 5.5 to the regular users’ ratings. They called it their geek score, statisticians call it a Bayesian average. We use this knowledge to calculate some alternative rankings. I often describe BoardGameGeek (BGG) as “the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) for games”. Much like its cinematic counterpart, the biggest board game database not only collects all sorts of information obsessively, but also allows users to rate games on a scale from 1 (awful - defies game description) to 10 (outstanding - will always enjoy playing). [Read More]
BoardGameGeek  BGG  ranking  rating  statistics  Bayesian  geek score  top 100  dummy ratings  highest rated games  alternative rankings